The South American qualifiers have come to an end. The top two teams at the event were Test123 and Pain Gaming. With a top-two finish, these teams secure their place at the upcoming Chongqing Major 2019.
However, in a statement posted on the official Dota 2 Blog; Valve mentions that Test123 is disqualified from the Major. This decision comes after PPD released a public statement regarding Test123’s validity for the Regional Qualifiers.
Valve’s decision to disqualify Test123 is the correct one.
The regional qualifiers are a means to help develop and grow the local scene in Dota 2. With the regional qualifiers spread over the world, we will witness the development of Dota 2 across the world. However, when a team like Test123, which has 4 North American players decides to take part in South American qualifiers it causes an imbalance. They already have a North American qualifier for themselves. Their decision to take part in the South America qualifiers is based solely on the difficulty of the North American qualifier. However, this also stifles the South American scene as local teams have a much lower chance of qualifying when teams from other regions participate.
The official statement.
Regional Qualifiers https://t.co/RrcXvvLn1F
— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) November 28, 2018
We are disqualifying Pain X from the South American regional qualifiers, and giving their spot to the runner-up, Thunder Predator.
Three months ago, we were contacted by Pain X inquiring about playing in the South American qualifiers. They asked if they could participate in them by travelling back and forth to the region to play in the qualifiers, rather than staying in the region. We explained to them that they couldn’t do that. We walked them through our reasoning, and what the purpose of regional qualifiers are, and why we thought that neither we nor fans would consider them an actual South American team.
The reasons for guaranteed spots for each region is because we want to help nurture competitive growth in different regions, as well as have regional representation for fans around the world. We think it’s important for fans to be able to see their regions grow, and their teams compete in global events. A team temporarily travelling to and from a region just to compete in the qualifiers clearly does not provide any meaningful benefit to the region, and harms growth overall. When you are an actual team that lives in a region, you end up practising with other teams, nurturing the region and growing local fans there. We explained this to Pain X three months ago, and as such, after investigating, we are removing them from the South American qualifiers
It is clear that despite approaching Valve regarding their position for the SA Qualifiers, Test123 decided to go forward with the same. Valve wants to ensure that they help develop the local scene. It is important that the local scene receives the necessary boost from these regional qualifiers. The Chongqing Major starts in January 2019.
